I spent July studying film through the University of Washington Cinema Studies Department in Beijing. We watched artistic films about Communism and Chinese women’s roles.
Fortunately, China is also the home of Peking duck, the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and a feverish unsung nightlife. With only three days of lecture in an average week of class, I was able to sample some of the ancient city’s more recent attractions.
Expect the typical cosmopolitan party schedule: Thursday through Saturday is a time for drinking and sexing. What American’s might not expect: bars stay open all night, many restaurants are open till 2, and the drinking age is a mysterious somewhere between 16-18, with liquor available on every corner 24-hours-a-day. The typical bottle of rice whisky from a grocery store cost the equivalent of one US dollar. A domestic bottled beer was cheaper than Costco bottled water.
But while it may be more commonly acknowledged that the drink is cheap and plentiful in socialist countries, I can also report that the music scene is alive and well in Beijing, if obviously not up to par with Berlin, London, or Issaquah. NME example: the Go-Team visited earlier this summer.
To my amazement and confusion, there are a handful of bars that book legitimate rock bands on a regular basis. With Stratocasters, tight jeans, and alcoholism, these young boys have everything you could want. Apparently during the late 80s rock music crept into the mainstream with democratic politics and economic reform before the former was crushed by the later during the 1989 incident.
Nowadays many bars book kitschy, awful karaoke bands. One particularly grotesque neon strip found me listening to bars drawing in disoriented knots of tourists by way of sloppy R&B covers. Stay out of popular foreigner-bar districts and these incidences can be avoided.
I think the best night I had at a recognizably punk/garage-rock bar was at a place called D-22 in the Haidian district, northwest of the city center. This bar catered to students, foreigners, and native born rockers in an area surrounded by universities. Run, according to the English website, as a non-profit in support of local music, D-22 seems to be the project of western investors and local musicians looking to develop an above-ground indie music scene in China’s capital. Imagine a smoky version of the Vera Project with a bar for the older, richer scene people. Imagine the proceeds.
The success of this clandestine international project depends on the kind of night out one prefers. If you enjoy a packed club full of nubile youngsters eager to socialize, steer clear of this dark, pretensions, often-vacant art-space. But if you enjoy a fairly sober evening with a few friends, a couple beers, and a local band that covers David Bowie’s “Five Years†during the encore, make a stop at D-22 Beijing.
For dancing, no area in Beijing is better than the strip of nightclubs and bars across from the Worker’s Stadium. I sampled two big clubs in the area, but there are dozens more. I want to mention Vicks. There are actually two big clubs facing each other across a large parking lot nearby the Worker’s Stadium: Mix and Vicks. The only thing I know about Mix is that it looked more expensive and newer on the outside (large minimalist neon sign) than Vicks. That night I was looking for a dance and a laugh, not a staring contest with bored Chinese celebrities, so I chose the dingier Vicks sign.
I did pay 50 Yuan (or about 7 US dollars) for entrance to Vicks, which while expensive for a Beijing bar, is a bargain. Vicks held all the mystique and fantasy of a typically seedy hold over from the mid 90s retro-disco dance scene. All the furnishings on the disco house level would have been very chic and expensive in a NYC of the 1970s.
In the basement, a few nerdy hip-hop DJs played top recent classics from the USA to a bouncing dance floor of ex-pats, students, and locals looking to be seen. I loved the drunk transnational frat boys on vacation and the barely pubescent body-builder who tried to impress one of my friends with all the exotic appeal of pelvic thrusts of a young American steroid-user in a Chinese hip-hop club.
On my last night in China I visited Destination, a sleek, trashy dance bar by the Worker’s Stadium. Slick DnB draws a Satuday crowd all light long. Great sound system, great lighting, and sweaty shirtless men, make this spot unacceptable for the casual night out. Everybody’s clothes and hair looked fresh off the set of a Korean cell phone commercial.
Did I mention that Destination is one of the most famous gay nightclubs in the world and one of the only places in China where gay men can be themselves in public? So amazing was the energy in this dance club that my intimidated group of friends left after one drink. We were simply unworthy in our loose-fitting suburban-American clothes and blubbery academic body-tissues.
I think Beijing’s night scene has something to offer anyone who would normally go out in the states, plus many goofy tourist options that for some may seem somewhat authentic. Importantly, the music is as good as any medium sized city in the US. Real rock bands come from Beijing. I saw one called Joyside play at D-22.
You may be the most enchanted by Beijing’s club scene if you are a gay Chinese man or a drunk college student trying to understand why you can’t properly digest food even after a month’s worth of drink tickets written in Mandarin have slipped through your chubby European fingers. Nevertheless, this city knows how to push you back out into those dimly-lit streets; how to make you wave down vaguely paternal cab drivers one more time.
And yes you meagerly informed, unknowing Orientalist, Karaoke and Starbucks are everywhere in Beijing.
